{
 "id": "wilfred-owen/s-i-w",
 "title": "S.I.W.",
 "poet": "Wilfred Owen",
 "poet_slug": "wilfred-owen",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 16,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": "“I will to the King, / And offer him consolation in his trouble, / For that man there has set his teeth to die, / And being one that hates obedience, / Discipline, and orderliness of life, / I cannot mourn him.”",
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1920,
  "venue": "Poems (1920)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsowenwil00owenrich",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1034"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/wilfred-owen_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1034",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100547417"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 34,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 60,
  "max_indent": 3
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Patting goodbye, doubtless they told the lad",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He’d always show the Hun a brave man’s face;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Father would sooner him dead than in disgrace⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was proud to see him going, aye, and glad.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Perhaps his Mother whimpered how she’d fret",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until he got a nice, safe wound to nurse.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sisters would wish girls too could shoot, charge, curse,⁠ ⁠…",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Brothers⁠—would send his favourite cigarette,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each week, month after month, they wrote the same,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thinking him sheltered in some Y. M. Hut,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where once an hour a bullet missed its aim",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And misses teased the hunger of his brain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His eyes grew old with wincing, and his hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Reckless with ague. Courage leaked, as sand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the best sandbags after years of rain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But never leave, wound, fever, trench-foot, shock,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Untrapped the wretch. And death seemed still withheld",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For torture of lying machinally shelled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At the pleasure of this world’s Powers who’d run amok.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He’d seen men shoot their hands, on night patrol,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their people never knew. Yet they were vile.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Death sooner than dishonour, that’s the style!”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So Father said.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "One dawn, our wire patrol",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "Carried him. This time, Death had not missed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We could do nothing, but wipe his bleeding cough.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Could it be accident?⁠—Rifles go off⁠ ⁠…",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not sniped? No. (Later they found the English ball.)",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It was the reasoned crisis of his soul.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Against the fires that would not burn him whole",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But kept him for death’s perjury and scoff",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And life’s half-promising, and both their riling.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "With him they buried the muzzle his teeth had kissed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And truthfully wrote the Mother “Tim died smiling.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}